1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a reel device including rotatable rotating reels of a gaming machine, and specifically, to a reel band which is used in a reel device including reels to be illuminated by a front light and a gaming machine using the reel band.
2. Related Art
In the related art, a gaming machine employs video reels or mechanical reels so as to display symbols. The video reels are realized by scroll-displaying images of symbols on a display device, such as a liquid crystal display. In the video reels, various images including images of symbols are displayed on the display device, and visibility of symbols is determined by luminance of the display device. In the display device, brightness of a light source, such as luminance on a display surface, is adjusted in advance so as to be nearly constant. If a plurality of pieces of image data which are different in tone, color strength, or color brightness are prepared, display is performed such that image data is gradually switched and displayed to change brightness of images.
In a gaming machine which employs mechanical reels, light-transmitting reel bands with symbols printed thereon are attached to the outer circumference of rotating reels, and the rotating reels are mechanically rotated by a motor or the like, thereby realizing scroll-display of symbols. In case of the mechanical reels, the rotating reels are provided in the housing of the gaming machine. For this reason, in order to allow a player to easily visually recognize the symbols, it is necessary to provide a backlight inside the rotating reel. Light emitted from the backlight is irradiated onto the rear surface of the reel, and light is transmitted through the reel band to improve visibility of the symbols.
As a light source of the backlight of the mechanical reel, a lamp, such as an LED (light-emitting diode), is employed. In particular, an LED is advantageously used in terms of emission intensity, power saving, heat generation prevention, and the like. In recent years, the LED can emit light of a plurality of colors, light having various emission intensities, light having high directivity in an emission range, or the like.
The backlight of the gaming machine is used so as to report the result of a lottery process to the player, or is used so as to show the result of a game determined by a combination of rearranged symbols. In this way, the backlight plays a major role in providing information relating to the game to the player. For this reason, in the gaming machine employing the mechanical reels, various kinds of information are reported to the player using various emission aspects of the backlight having an LED.
However, the backlight is disposed at a given position inside the rotating reel, and light emitted from the backlight travels in a given direction. For this reason, light emitted from the backlight illuminates only a given region of the rear surface of the rotating reel. Most of emitted light is often blocked by the reel band depending on the configuration of the reel band.
In this way, since there is a problem in that the reel cannot be sufficiently illuminated only with the backlight, a gaming machine which uses a front light together has been suggested (for example, Patent Document 1). The front light functions as a backlight of a liquid crystal panel and also functions as a light which irradiates symbols of a rotating reel. The front light is provided in the end portion of the liquid crystal panel, that is, the end portion of a display window of the rotating reel. For this reason, light emitted from the front light cannot reach throughout the front portion of the rotating reel and cannot sufficiently illuminate the front portion of the rotating reel. Accordingly, the front light is merely an auxiliary illumination device, and a backlight for illumination from the rear surface of the rotating reel is also required.
[Patent Document 1] U.S. Pat. No. 7,159,865